Noah Kagan talked to us about how he used a version of Bullseye at Mint, a site that helps you track your finances and was acquired by Intuit for $170 million. Their initial traction goal was 100,000 users in the first six months after launch.
In steps 1-3, Noah and his team brainstormed and picked several traction channels that seemed promising (targeting blogs, pr, search engine marketing) - their inner circle.
In step 4, they then ran a series of cheap tests in each (sponsored a small newsletter, reached out to financial celebrities like Suze Orman, placed some Google ads) to see what worked and what didn't. Noah kept track of the test results in this spreadsheet:
| Source | Traffic | CTR | Conversion % | Total Users | Status | Confirmed | Confirmed Users |
| TechCrunch | 300,000 | 10% | 25% | 7500 | Friend | Yes | 7,500 |
| Dave McClure | 30,000 | 10% | 25% | 750 | Friend | Yes | 750 |
| Mashable | 500,000 | 10% | 25% | 12500 | Emailing | No | 0 |
| 25,000 | 100% | 25% | 6250 | Coordinated | Yes | 6,250 | |
| Digg | 100,000 | 100% | 25% | 25000 | Coordinated | Yes | 25,000 |
| Google Organic | 5,000 | 100% | 15% | 750 | Receiving | Yes | 750 |
| Google Ads | 1,000,000 | 3% | 35% | 10500 | Bought | Yes | 10,500 |
| Paul Stamatiou | 50,000 | 5% | 50% | 1250 | Friend | Yes | 1,250 |
| Personal Finance Sponsorships | 200,000 | 40% | 65% | 52000 | Coordinated | Yes | 52,000 |
| Okdork.com | 3,000 | 10% | 75% | 225 | Self | Yes | 225 |
| Total Users | 116,725 | 104,225 |
Step 5: after running these experiments, Mint focused on the traction channel that seemed most promising and that could reach their goal. In this case, that meant targeting blogs. In the early days, the tactics of sponsoring mid-level bloggers in the financial niche and guest posting allowed them to acquire their first 40,000 customers.
When this channel maxed out, they repeated the Bullseye process, and found a new traction channel to focus on: public relations. Within 6 months of launching, they had 1 million users. We cover specific strategies for both these traction channels in later chapters.
We heard stories like this over and over again when talking to successful startup founders. They would research many channels, try a few, and focus on the most promising until it stopped working. Bullseye is designed to systemize this successful process. Use it!